Sandbox III: Revenge of the Sandbox

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SCP Sandbox

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Special Containment Procedure: SCP-4398 is to be contained in a standard animal enclosure appropriate for its size, and provided with food, water and clean soil according to the basic needs of a non-anomalous tortoise.

Personnel interacting with SCP-4398 must not show any intent of communicating with it, be it verbal, written or physical, and particularly with topics related to space, science fiction, futurism, physics and/or geometry. In case of doing so and being affected, Lead Researcher Rodríguez and MTF Delta-4 (“Heart’s Respite”) are to be contacted to treat the individual according to the severity of the contamination of their psycho-animic apparatus1.

Description: SCP-4398 is a tortoise of unknown age resembling a young Chelonoidis nigra (Galápagos tortoise).

SCP-4398 is capable of speaking and understanding at least 50 human languages, and it will only speak when a human is present. Its speech presents a heavy use of oxymoron, is mostly devoid of semantics on a non-meta level, and is produced at seemingly random intervals2.

All human subjects that attempt to communicate with SCP-4398 mentioning specific words or concepts relating to space, science fiction, futurism, physics and/or geometry, will suffer a psycho-animic contamination episode. It should be noted that it is not the actual message being communicated what triggers the episode, but the intent of communicating with SCP-4398 regarding these topics.

Broadly, the method of communication must be shared and understood by 2 or more human individuals, and be either verbal, written (drawing included) or physical (hand signals, facial expressions, body language, changes in posture, et al).

The psycho-animic contamination episode will last between 20 and 80 minutes. Its symptoms consist of hallucinations in the 5 traditional senses, accompanied by severe panic attacks intruding in the subject’s psyche. The content of these hallucinations can usually be linked to the specific words and concepts that triggered the episode. As well, the contamination of the subject’s psycho-animic apparatus can completely override their exteroception, leading them to believe they have been transported to a different dimension, reality or planet. As of now, there is no concrete evidence of this being the case.

In a number of cases, the content of the hallucinations possessed elements not present in the human noosphere3, meaning their fabrication was not limited by the collective pooled knowledge or the collective imaginary of the human race across its entire history4. In these cases, the hallucinated images, elements, experiences or information have been later confirmed as either plausible of existing or completely real, making them more akin to “visions” from an unknown source that potentially exists in a multitude of dimensions beyond those in which humanity operates consciously.

EEG and MRI scans indicated that subjects were perceiving actual stimuli during their hallucinations, even though there were no other significant sources of stimuli besides SCP-4398 in the testing area, nor was there brain activity similar to drug, psychosis or hypnosis-induced hallucinations.

After all symptoms subside, the subject will experience momentary discomfort, disorientation and both mental and physical fatigue. When the symptoms are more intense, however, it can lead to a permanent change in their personality on a deep psycho-animic level5.

Tests had the overarching objective of finding a pragmatic use to the state of consciousness induced by SCP-4398 on human subjects. All subjects tested fall within the baseline of mental and physical health as defined by the DSM 5.

TEST #05Foreword: Subject and SCP-4398 interacted in Spanish. All direct quotes have been appropriately translated to English.Subject: D-5210-F, former elementary math teacher.Location: Testing room 04, Site-71Test: D-5210-F was instructed to talk with SCP-4398 about the Pythagoras theorem. 2 minutes in, SCP-4398 said “Nothingness extends endlessly at the end of this geometric cube, from towers towards the heavens of no worlds, at the darkest corner of a lightless light”. D-5210-F replied with “I don’t know what that means”, triggering an episode.Results: D-5210-F suffered severe disorientation, confusion, and remained silent for 24 minutes. After the symptoms subsided, the subject remembered “feeling in pieces and fractured, with my head all over the place”. The subject did not recall any more symptoms clearly, but was certain he hallucinated throughout the episode. From his recount of events, the walls of the room seemed to have broken into what he could only describe as “fractal configurations”.

TEST #14Foreword: Subjects and SCP-4398 interacted in Italian. All direct quotes have been appropriately translated to English.Subject: D-9199-X and D-7773-MLocation: Backyard of Site-71Test: Subjects were instructed to converse with each other about life in the year 3000 CE, ignoring SCP-4398 and all its vocalizations at all cost. After 35 minutes, SCP-4398 said “Renounce to gravity and desire, for the endless worm watches no one for the sake of entropy. A right turn. A right turn. Above and in circles, not for us but for the swine”, which prompted D-9199-X to look at SCP-4398, tilt her head and squint her eyes, triggering an episode just for her.Results: Subject ran to the southern corner of the yard and sat there in fetal position for 51 minutes, showing standard signs of a panic attack. After the symptoms subsided, she described the experience as “a journey through the stars, or at least the solar system”, the source of her fear apparently being the journey through empty interplanetary space.
In an alien planet, she saw “massive triangles (RN: probably tetrahedrons) and cubes eclipsing the sun and rising into the sky, holding everything together, watching”. She also claimed that the sky was filled with geometrical figures that had taken the place of the stars (RN: from the description, it would seem the subject could visualize these figures in 4 spatial dimensions, which would explain her difficulty to describe them).
D-BBBB did not experience an episode.Afterword: Even though D-9199-X had no previous knowledge of astrophysics, from her precise descriptions of the sky and recollection of specific coordinates, it was possible to confirm the existence and location of Planet 9 in the Solar System. Deep space imaging has not found evidence of structures on its surface or orbit. Subject does not know how she got the coordinates.

TEST #24Foreword: Subject and SCP-4398 interacted in English.Subject: D-2454-J, was an Oxford student majoring in physics, that intended to specialize in astrophysics.Location: Dr. Rodríguez's office.Test: Subject was instructed to interact with SCP-4398 and try to learn something relating to physics from the entity. After 4 minutes, SCP-4398 said “Long lost for everyone but the universe, when the journey across galaxies will take merely trillions of lives, to feed off the hyper-mass”. Subject smiled, triggering an episode.Results: Subject’s muscles relaxed to the point where she sank in her chair. Her eyes remained open and her face showed no discernible expression. After 77 minutes she regained her composure and was summarily debriefed. Her recount of the episode included a “… complex series of intertwined structures across the entire universe, holding everything together”, as well as highly theoretical hypothesis on the unification of natural forces into a single all-encompassing force.
She claimed that “… [the hypothesis] came to me through a series of intense emotions, and I am sure that they could be decoded by simply looking at the figures and movements inside of me. Or at least the ones beyond me”. However, a significant portion of the equations needed to resolve these hypothesis are being lost in translation, due to the human thought process being limited by its existence in a 3-dimensional space.
D-2454-J believes that the mental process that allowed her to unlock this information can be reproduced given the right conditions, which should allow her to discover some connection between the Psycho-animic Theory and not-yet-known natural laws. She insisted multiple times a day, every day, to the guards assigned to her cell to let her talk to SCP-4398 again, probably due to obsessive ideas intruding in her psyche from a deep psycho-animic level. This continued for 52 days until Site Administration ordered her amnestization, which made her personality deviate even further from the pre-established baseline.Afterword: As of now, this has been the only case in which a subject suffered complete loss of muscle tone during an episode.

TEST #28Foreword: Subject and SCP-4398 interacted in Hindi. All direct quotes have been appropriately translated to English.Subject: Rohan Bhatt, 72 year old male, responsible of the Manish Temple in Tibet, India.Location: Argentine Andes, 50 kilometers from Site-71.Test: Subject was briefed on SCP-4398’s anomalous properties and taught the basic concepts behind the Psycho-animic Theory. This test had the objective of using SCP-4398 to access a hypothesized state of consciousness by penetrating the defense mechanisms of the psycho-animic apparatus, which would give the subject an understanding of the laws of physics impossible to attain with the current genetic limitations of the human brain and its existence in a 3-dimensional spatial plane.
Subject introduced himself to SCP-4398, sat on his knees and listened quietly. After 54 minutes, subject said he was interested in learning about the universe, to which SCP-4398 said “Forever into the distant past, when lines were straight for space and time, to undo the undoable, straight into the future, for a ring that stretches into infinity”. Subject nodded and closed his eyes, triggering an episode.Results: Subject immediately fell to the ground and remained immobile. On-site medics found no vital signs on him. Post-mortem studies were inconclusive in finding a cause of death.Afterword: Based on the results of these tests, Site Administration has ordered the transfer of SCP-4398 to Area-08 at the base of the Himalayas for further testing, along with the inanimate body of Rohan Bhatt. A cover up story involving his sudden death remains to be decided.
Dr. Rodríguez sustains the possibility of the cause of death being a sudden and complete dissociation between his psycho-animic apparatus and the central nervous system.

Footnotes

1. Theorized multi-dimensional apparatus in which the human consciousness operates, capable of imprinting a permanent effect in the human psyche, directly linked but not limited to the configuration of an individual’s central nervous system.

2. e.g. “Point it for me as night falls, the nearby constellations uniting distant triangles of energy, or the tower that holds the multi-faced void.”

5. Brain scans performed before and after the episode show no records or evidence of a change in the physiology or electro-chemistry of the subject’s brain to sustain that SCP-4398 is affecting them on a physical level.